Roaming Home

"I spent eight years living in Minneapolis… And I couldn't wait to get home,” Simpson proclaims from her home in Fremantle, settling a crying son while juggling the phone. “I'm just a West Aussie at heart.”

With Vikki Thorn still across the globe in Utah, raising sons of her own, Skype has become the ultimate songwriters' friend for the two. “It's pretty bloody handy actually, as long as you can get the kids out of the room,” Simpson laughs. “We really missed playing music together. So now we jam on Skype. Just before you called we were jamming on a song.”

Playing across continents has also been the impetus to start a new project, The Stray Sisters, giving Simpson and Thorn a chance to return to the stage while The Waifs continue a break. “We just feel like we want to see each other, sing together in the flesh, and tour, you know? 'Cause it's so ingrained in us.

“When we talked about going out on tour together just the two of us, I automatically started writing again and just got really excited, started playing my guitar more. Vikki's always writing material anyway. We've got a heap of new songs; we'll dig out some old Waifs songs as well.

“It's gone back towards the storytelling aspect of songs. The Waifs used to play a lot of songs like that and then it went a bit more poppy. Vik and I have come back to storytelling in the songwriting.

“I mean there'll be nothing for us to hide behind. We can't hide behind Josh's great guitar playing anymore,” Simpson laughs. “It's just going to be us. There's pressure on ourselves to get things right.”

The sisters are aware there'll be plenty of expectations from Waifs devotees, especially after such a long break. 

“The audience is very important to us. We don't get up there full of ego and just play our songs and expect everyone to just shut up and listen. It's always a joyous and very enjoyable occasion for us when we perform. So I would hope the audience would really feel the same, have that connection with us. That's what The Waifs has always been about. 

“You know people love to hear things that they're familiar with, that's for sure. But there's also songs that we feel that we've written that maybe got lost behind the band, you know? So this will be a really nice way of making it quite raw and giving the songs the space they deserve.”